


Hoa

by Waldo



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s01e10 Heihei (Race), Established Relationship, Humor, M/M, Romance, Slash, Thanksgiving, Yuletide, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:47:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/pseuds/Waldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’d rather that, for the sake of my sixty-something-year-old parents we keep the definition of ‘my partner’ to mean ‘that guy I work with who periodically tries to kill me with his stunt driving’?”</p><p>Danny wants to take Steve back to Jersey for Thanksgiving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hoʻomanaʻo ʻana

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miriad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miriad/gifts).



Family was everything, or damn near to it, for Danny. Steve had learned that on their very first case. It was why he’d been surprised that he’d had to spell out for him a few weeks ago that while Grace may be his only blood-relative on the island, his team was his new family. At least here in Hawaii. Steve had heard all about the sister and two brothers, both parents and the assorted great aunts and whatever back in Jersey. One afternoon he’d even walked in to the weirdest case of one-upmanship as Chin and Kono and Danny had been going over not only the large number of cousins they had but how many were in jail (mostly as staff in Chin and Kono’s case, mostly as inmates in Danny’s).

Yet somehow he was still surprised at Danny keying into his own lack of family. They’d been on their way to the scene of the armored car heist when Danny had casually thrown out, “You know, Grace and I are going back to Jersey for Thanksgiving, since Rachel has her for Christmas this year. You said Mary was back in California for a while, so you could come with us unless you have, like, a maiden aunt I don’t know about or something to have turkey dinner with.”

Steve was sure he’d given Danny a face that Danny would later give a name to, and very probably a diagnosis. Fortunately, they hit the crime scene before Steve could feel obligated to give an answer. It wasn’t the time or the expense of flying all the way to the east coast… he just wasn’t sure their relationship had hit the point of ‘meeting the in-laws’ yet.

He made a different face, glad that Danny was already climbing out of the car and not looking at him, when he realized that while he might have to walk that particular gauntlet sometime soon, Danny never would. For the first time in a while, Steve missed his dad. It wasn’t the usual feeling of rage at Victor Hesse – whose ass he would rake over the coals some day soon – that he usually felt, but this time it was a keen ache for the actual loss of his dad.

As they caught up with Kono and Chin, Steve pushed all that aside and refused to get distracted by the fact that he was looking at his first holiday season without his biological family or his Navy family.

He watched the two native Hawaiians move through the crime scene. Ever since the case that had sucked in yet another of their cousins, Sid, Chin had started making a few inroads with his own family. Steve was pretty sure Kono was leading that particular charge, so he was reasonably sure they had plans for the long weekend. Not that he wasn’t absolutely sure that if anyone were to remind them that Steve was alone that they wouldn’t only invite him over, they’d suck him in with the force of a hurricane.

Which brought him back to Danny’s invitation. He _didn’t_ have other plans, he wasn’t even sure who he could make plans _with_ if he wanted to conjure up an excuse, but he still couldn’t imagine sitting around a table full of Dannys and not feeling weird.

Once in the car, Danny was quiet other than suggesting they hit Side Street. It wasn’t lost on Steve that Danny was watching Rachel’s place in the side mirror until he finally rounded the corner. He let Danny brood as he drove, figuring he could try a tactful question or two that hopefully wouldn’t end up with him getting a chip-bag crinkled in his ear piece and Danny’s bullshit excuse that their extremely high tech earwigs were wigging out, once they had beer.

He told Danny to get a table while he went up to the bar to grab the drinks. He was pretty sure Danny was already weaving a little as he made his way to a booth in the corner. It was about two in the afternoon and they’d been running since they found out about the armored car heist. Yesterday morning. Danny sat facing the wall, leaving Steve the seat that would let him keep an eye on the door. Steve wondered when Danny figured out that it did, in fact, make him a bit twitchy to leave his back to a room of people. Even people whom he had no reason to consider a threat whatsoever.

It was almost a dozen minutes later when Steve made his way over and slid into his side of the booth. He raised an eyebrow about the fact that Danny hadn’t come chasing after him and doesn’t even ask what the hell took so long to get two beers.

Steve carefully set down the large plate of wings between them and set one of the beers next to Danny’s left thumb, tapping him out of his fugue with the cold glass.

“You okay?” he asked, laughing a little when Danny had to literally shake himself back to the moment.

“Yeah. You know, it wouldn’t kill you to look like you’ve been up for at least thirty-six hours, because, you know, we have.” He dragged his hand over his face, wincing at the nearly full beard that had sprung up.

Steve slid the plate a little closer to Danny. “I’m pretty sure I feel at least as bad as you look,” he snarked. “Eat something. Drinking on an empty stomach is pretty suicidal right now.”

“What are they?” Danny asked, absolutely certain they couldn’t be as innocuous as they looked.

“Spicy chicken wings. I figured even a guy from New Jersey would recognize chicken wings.”

Danny found the energy to flip Steve off with one hand as he reached for a wing with the other.

They were half way through the plate of wings and Steve had gone up for sodas for the both of them, realizing that any more beer on top of their sleep deprivation was less than brilliant, before Danny spoke again.

“What the hell is your problem?” he asked when Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat for the fifth time in three minutes.

“Nothing, I just… nothin’. Never mind.”

Danny dropped the bone from his wing on the plate before glaring up at Steve. “So help me, McGarrett, if you don’t spit it out…” he wasn’t sure where he was going with that threat, so he let it hang.

“I just…” Steve stopped and thought, trying to be tactful. He wasn’t used to having to be gentle with Danny, and he wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to get belted for trying it now, but even he knew that coming at this like a freight train wasn’t going to end well for him. “Rachel wasn’t what I expected.”

Danny poked at the ice floating in his Sprite with his straw. “Yeah, I got that a lot when we were married.”

Steve sighed again. Now that Danny was talking and not telling him to fuck off, he was burning to ask the question, but he still couldn’t find a way to do it without being ridiculously crass. He tried poking around the edges of the issue hoping Danny would catch on. “So how… I mean… you said part of the problem was that a cop’s salary wasn’t quite what she… what? What she expected it to be? She had to see that coming, right? You were already a cop when you two met, so…”

Danny shrugged. “Yeah, I was. But I guess she thought she was okay living in an eight-hundred dollar a month apartment in the suburbs of New Jersey… until she met someone who could give her a mansion in the middle of a tropical paradise.”

There it was; the question Steve didn’t know how to ask. “So… she…” The subject was hanging between them, but Steve still wasn’t sure how to actually say the words.

“She left me for him? Yeah.”

“Ouch,” Steve said. “That really sucks, brah.”

“Tell me about it. I think I need another beer.”

“You’re half-asleep where you are, I don’t think so,” Steve told him. He knew he was driving, but he didn’t relish the idea of carrying Danny either out to or out of the car.

Danny slumped in his seat. “I won’t say things were great before that. Rachel went back to work once Grace was in school full time. But then Grace started getting sick a lot for a while and we were having problems with scheduling who would be off when to stay home with her and fighting over whose job took priority. Most of her work was contract stuff, so with the economy tanking, people weren’t hiring high-end financial planners much. Which you would think would solve the first problem, but it didn’t because she would have meetings in, I don’t know Zurich or something that would inevitably come up just as I got a big case, and she felt like she had to take any client she could get so…” Danny slumped in his seat, tracing patterns in the condensation on his glass.

“ Grace was starting to think she lived with my sister she was there so much. Rachel kept wanting to take Grace to the U.K. for Christmas and didn’t understand that cops can’t just take off _every_ holiday, every year. Not to mention we really couldn’t afford to fly across the ocean every six weeks or whatever, just because she wanted to show Grace some damn thing or another from when she was a kid.”

Danny was warming up to the subject now and Steve was wondering if he shouldn’t have brought it up at all. When Danny paused for a breath and looked up, Steve gave him a look that clearly said that Danny didn’t need to go into details. And if he did, possibly he might not do it quite so loudly.

“Anyway,” Danny’s voice dropped back down, “She met Stan at some meeting she had out here with some client. She says she never slept with him until after the divorce was finalized, but I know there were tons of phone calls and emails. She came back out here two more times - supposedly on business, but I’m still not sure that was true. After the last time she came back she said she was leaving me. Four months later the papers were signed, a month after that she had packed up Grace and moved her out here, a month after that she was remarried. Her lawyer so kindly informed me that if I wanted to avail myself of my visitation rights I could either pay for the airfare to ship Grace back and forth across the planet or I could move to where she was.” Danny shrugged and poked at his ice again, wishing again that he were drinking something stronger. “So here I am.”

Steve couldn’t deny that he’d wondered how fast things had happened. He’d gotten the impression that everything had gone down quickly. He’d seen plenty of parents working out custody issues after a separation, and he knew that the first couple of years tended to be dicey, but eventually patterns emerged and long-standing compromises became habits and the kind of short-notice issues Danny was still going through ironed themselves out. Yet somehow he was surprised to learn that the whole thing had gone down in less than a year.

Steve rubbed his face with his palms. Christ, this had to have started over the holidays last year, he realized. And Rachel had somehow wrangled Grace for their first Christmas apart. He made a mental note to try and find something for him and Danny to do if they weren’t hip deep in a case. If nothing else they could both get really, really drunk and try to pretend it didn’t hurt like hell to face your first holiday without your family.

Without warning Danny stood up. “I should get home. I’m really tired and getting maudlin.”

“Maudlin?” Steve repeated. He wasn’t sure why, but Danny using that word cracked him up. He filed it away with _ergo_.

Danny glared at him. “You want to go six rounds of who has the weirdest vocabulary right now?”

Steve stood up, feeling a little odd to not need to pay the tab or leave a tip, but he’d handled everything at the bar. “I really don’t,” he conceded.

He caught Danny mumbling something about “at least I use all twenty-six letters in the alphabet in mine,” as he fished his wallet out of his pants pocket.

Steve let the slam go and put his hand over Danny’s. “I got it at the bar.”

“I said this one was on me.”

“Yeah, but I owe you for the two times I forgot my wallet. It’s paid, don’t worry about it.”

Danny squinted up at him through one eye, trying to figure out if Steve was up to something. Ultimately he must have decided that even if he was, it wasn’t worth sorting out at that point, and shoved his wallet back in his pocket and headed for the car.

As they got in and buckled their seatbelts, Steve reached over and squeezed Danny’s hand. “Come back to my place?”

“I need to _sleep_ , man, seriously.” They’d been having sex pretty regularly for a few weeks now. They seemed to almost always end up at Steve’s and for the first week or so, Danny had scrounged around for his clothes after and left. More recently he’d been staying over, but only after they’d sex; he’d never stayed just stay. Just to not sleep alone.

“So do I,” Steve agreed. “But we have to wake up eventually.” He raised an eyebrow at Danny suggestively.

“Fair point,” Danny agreed, and smiled at him for the first time since leaving Rachel’s place.


	2. Kakahiaka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I need to _sleep_ man, seriously.”   
>  “So do I,” Steve agreed. “But we have to wake up eventually.” He raised an eyebrow at Danny suggestively.

Despite being half-asleep on his feet, Danny had insisted that he shower and shave before going to bed. But once he had, he pulled on a pair of boxers from the bag he kept in the car and crashed hard. He vaguely remembered hearing the shower go on again and he woke just enough to scoot over and make room for Steve when he came in and snuggled up to Danny. That was the last thing he knew for the next fifteen hours.

He woke to the feel of the air conditioning blowing on his face. He liked the feeling of cold air on his face, a cocoon of warmth around the rest of him, the heat generated by his body and Steve’s trapped under the sheet and blanket. He could tell by the way Steve’s breath fell on his neck and the gentle press of Steve’s chest against his back with each breath that Steve was still completely unconscious. It had been weird the first few times Danny had woken up in Steve’s bed to find Steve still asleep. Danny would have figured Steve to be the sort who slept on high alert, jumping up at every little sound or flash of light. But soon enough he’d discovered that at least while he was in his own home, Steve could sleep like a log. Danny could squirm out of the arm that Steve inevitable threw over him, hit the head and crawl back into bed without Steve so much as flinching. Yet, if Danny went back to sleep, he’d find that sometime during the night Steve had rolled back against him and tossed an arm over his chest or back again. Danny still wondered why he didn’t mind that as much as he thought he should.

He lay there musing about the nature of his relationship with Steve for a few minutes.

Things could get downright weird between them. They could stand next to the car having screaming, yelling, insulting arguments about the way they should conduct themselves on the job and then get in the car and find themselves spilling intimate stories and details that he could never imagine telling Kono or Chin or his old partner Meka. Hell, there had been that day last week where he’d told Steve the story about how he’d been nine the first time he saw someone die. It had been when he and a friend had been walking home from school and a sixteen-year-old kid had been trying to change the radio station and he’d come up off the road and run over Chris with both front tires. Danny’s saving grace? He’d stopped five or six feet back to tie his shoe. He didn’t think he’d ever told Rachel about that one. Steve had reached over and squeezed his hand, holding it until the silence got awkward – because really what was there to say to that – and then he’d flipped on the radio. It made Danny wonder if he trusted Steve more, in the three months he’d known the guy, than he’d trusted Rachel in their seven-year marriage.

He thought back to the night before, when they’d been talking at Side Street. Maybe it was a little uncomfortable at the time, but in hindsight he felt good having told Steve about what had happened with Rachel. He hadn’t wanted to drag his personal issues into work when it had been happening. He hadn’t felt close enough to anyone at HPD to share those kinds of things with. It was nice to be able to tell the story from his side somewhere other than in court.

Hell, ever since they’d had to involve Rachel in their case, Steve had been doing everything he could to make it less awkward, less awful for him. When Danny had snarked that Rachel was the lucky one because he was, in fact, a good catch, Steve hadn’t argued. Not that he had a lot of position to, at this point, but their normal ‘thing’ would have involved at least a dismissive laugh. It had been a near disaster, but Steve letting him get out of Rachel’s house when the tri-athletes had left their place had been a godsend. And while he couldn’t figure out the whole conversation, Steve had left his mic open when he’d told Rachel that he was a great cop. He was pretty sure that was as close as he’d ever come to saying to Danny’s face, but Danny also knew that Steve McGarrett didn’t leave a mic open on accident.

Danny hadn’t been sure what to expect when he’d decided to follow Grace across the hemisphere, but it sure as hell hadn’t been a job that was more exciting (and terrifying) than any he could expect with a regular police force. It sure as hell wasn’t a partner who’d make him fear for his life and then screw him senseless in the same day. It wasn’t a partner he could call a caveman when he got too rough with a suspect, but then accidentally slip and call him ‘babe’ in front of a co-worker (and he was sure at some point there’d be a discussion with Kono about that). It wasn’t a partner who committed the damnedest things to memory – like Grace’s school schedule. Who knew that on Tuesdays – Danny’s day with her – she had phys ed at the end of the day and would suggest that, since they had their paperwork done, and since Grace was in tennis lessons that missing a gym class wouldn’t hurt her and that they should pick her up early and go out for shave ice and then rent kayaks for a sunset paddle, just the three of them. Of course, Steve had waited until Grace was already in the car to mention the kayaks to ensure that Danny got double teamed and ended up in the water despite his well-stated position on the subject.

He still didn’t think he got enough time with Grace, but other than that, he had to admit, his life in Pineapple Hell wasn’t half-bad. Not that he had any intention of letting Steve know that he was acclimating better and faster than he’d ever dreamed possible.

Somewhere in his musings, Steve must have woken up, because the hand that had been on his stomach was now cupping his cock through his shorts and he was more than half-hard.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Steve mumbled against his neck.

“It may be, if you keep doing that,” Danny mumbled, deciding not to argue the point that he’d been up for at least twenty minutes before Steve showed signs of life. They’d already proven that they could actually argue themselves out of the mood for sex if they let the back-and-forth get out of hand. He could make his point over breakfast.

“What? This?” Steve asked as he slid his hand under the waistband of Danny’s boxers and wrapped his fingers around Danny’s cock, skin-to-skin.

“What else did you _possibly_ think I could be referring to?” Danny asked, his previous resolution be damned.

“I guess it had to be this,” Steve answered, lips still against the back of Danny’s neck, “since I can’t do much else with your damn shorts in the way.”

Steve had tried to get Danny to lose the boxers when he’d crawled into bed, but too many nights of having a kid in the house had Danny accustomed to sleeping in _something_ , and as he’d had to groggily remind Steve, he was going to sleep – hell he was already asleep by the time Steve came in; sex could wait.

Sighing with feigned impatience, Danny lifted his hips and shoved his boxers down to his knees. “Seriously, you’d think someone with SEAL training could penetrate a cotton barrier.”

Steve contorted to reach down and finish pulling the boxers off Danny’s legs and then slid one arm between Danny’s legs and one around his shoulders and flipped them so that Danny was on top of him. “I promise you that wasn’t what I was thinking of penetrating,” Steve said, pulling Danny’s head down and sucking on that place where Danny’s jaw and neck joined, knowing how that one little spot could make Danny nuts and reasonably speechless for a few minutes.

When Steve released his head, Danny stretched to the side and began fumbling under the pillows.

“The hell are you doing, man?” Steve asked laughing at the sudden desperation in Danny’s movements.

“Looking for the fucking lube and a goddamn condom,” Danny muttered, still feeling around under first his pillow then Steve’s.

Steve sighed and reached into his pillowcase, pulling out both items. “You mean these?”

“In the pillowcase?” Danny asked, shifting so that his knees were on either side of Steve’s ribs and he was propped up on his hands over Steve’s face.

“Less likely to get knocked on the floor when you start,” Steve waved his hand in a very Danny-like way at the bedding all knocked askew in Danny’s search “all this.”

“Whatever,” Danny muttered, not wanting to waste more time on talking.

Steve set the bottle and condom on the mattress and put his hand back over Danny’s dick, stroking gently with his fingertips. “You’re suddenly very impatient. Weren’t you the guy accusing me of being the one of having a one track mind last night?”

Danny shivered at the light touch and bit his lip. He’d never been a huge fan of hard and fast, but soft, intimate touches like this were a good way to have him on the edge between one heartbeat and the next.

“And weren’t you the one bitching that my underwear were in the way. Now they aren’t, so…” Danny gave him an unmistakable ‘get on with it, what are you waiting for?’ look.

“You’re pushy bastard, you know that?” Steve slapped Danny’s ass loud enough to make the room ring with the sound and for a bright red handprint to bloom on the white skin. Danny threw his head back and hissed. Steve noticed the way Danny’s cock jumped and that Danny didn’t immediately try to hit him back for it. “Okay, we’ll be following up on that later,” he commented and then grabbed the lube before Danny could either deny what had just happened or try to have the conversation now. Steve’s morning erection was getting more and more insistent as Danny squirmed against it. “Up on your knees,” Steve directed once he’d coated his fingers with lube.

Danny shifted so that his ass was up and his head was on Steve’s chest. He rocked into Steve’s fingers as Steve stretched and lubed him. When he felt ready, he began to roll back onto the bed, but Steve grabbed him and pulled him back to where he was. Danny sat up, leaning back on Steve’s bent knees. “What?”

“Stay there,” Steve told him as he ripped open the condom wrapper with his teeth and reached around Danny to quickly roll it on. “You want to be the one in charge, that’s fine with me.” Steve pulled Danny forward with one hand on his hip until Danny scooted up a bit so that Steve could use his other hand to hold his cock until Danny’s ass was lined up with it.

The plan clicked for Danny, and his cock, which had begun to flag just a little, leapt back into the game. He held himself still as Steve guided the head of his cock into Danny’s ass before dropping his hand to the bed, letting Danny lower himself down the rest of the way at his own pace. Danny shifted and rolled his hips just enough to make sure Steve’s cock brushed his prostate as he came down off his knees until he was completely seated against Steve’s body. He rolled his eyes back as he let the feeling of fullness wash over him. “Why the hell have we not thought of this before?” he asked as he positioned his hands on Steve’s shoulders for leverage.

“Because we’ve only been sleeping together for about three weeks and there’s a few hundred things we haven’t had time to try yet,” Steve said with a smug grin.

“A few hundred? What are you, a walking Kama Sutra?” Danny rocked up and back before Steve could form an answer.

“I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve,” Steve finally found the breath to say as he reached up and began stroking Danny’s cock in counterpoint as Danny continued to ride him.

It had been a long couple days, filled with tension and aggravation that had built up with no acceptable outlet. Now that Danny had a place to channel some of the pent up stress, he was loath for the moment to end, but he could feel the ways his muscles started to clench and the little sparks of electricity starting to climb his spine that indicated the end was, in fact imminent. He glanced up to see Steve’s head press into the pillow and his eyes screw shut. “Come on, come on, you first,” Danny prodded, squeezing Steve’s cock as he slid back down him.

In retribution, Steve loosened his grip on Danny’s cock and went back to stroking him with his fingertips. “Oh, oh god, no fair,” Danny bit out, but he could see that he was winning the war. Steve had gone silent, which Danny knew meant he was about to come. “You like when I do that?” Danny asked before tightening up on his next downstroke.

That was all Steve could take. He dropped Danny’s cock in favor of digging his fingers into Danny’s thigh and fisting the sheet as he arched his back and came.

When Steve finally had control of his body again, he gripped Danny’s cock and pumped with one hand while the other trailed against Danny’s spine as Danny tossed his head back and worked for his own release. When it finally came, Steve had to smile at the way Danny’s eyes flew open and locked onto his, the way Danny grunted once before coming all over Steve’s chest and then collapsing onto Steve, making them both sticky.

Steve had the foresight to grab a tissue and snake a hand between them to clean them off as best he could before things got terribly unpleasant.

Danny had barely caught his breath when Steve flipped them back over and lay down over him, propped up on his elbows, his face only inches from Danny’s. “Were you serious yesterday?”

“Which of the possibly thousands of things I said during that forty-six-hour day could you possibly be referring to?” Danny asked. His brain wasn’t quite back on-line yet, and he was a little put out by Steve thinking it would be.

Steve shifted to come off his arms and rest his chin on Danny’s shoulder. When you asked if I wanted to come back to Jersey with you for Thanksgiving. If you didn’t, it’s cool. I know sometimes people say things because they feel obli-“

“I meant it,” Danny cut him off, shifting his brain into gear since apparently this was going to be a discussion of some seriousness and length. “I was just thinking, you know, since Mary was in L.A. again and your dad’s gone… And, well, honestly, I kind of like the idea of having someone there to run interference with my ma if she gets all weird about me being there without Rachel, you know? So, yes, I’m planning on using you as a reason to not have to go twelve rounds with my mother. You got a problem with that?”

“No problem with _that_ ,” Steve said, one finger tracing over the scar on Danny’s arm where Steve had gotten him shot on their very first case.

Danny sighed, knowing Steve’s tone all too well. “So what _is_ the problem?”

Steve shifted and sat up, not sure if this was going to become a fight or not. “Look, Kono and Chin are pretty observant. They may have figured this – “ he indicated the two of them with one hand – “out on their own, but we haven’t _told_ them. Though, Kono may have a clue since you decided it was necessary to call me ‘babe’ in that chiropractor’s office. Anyway, I’m… not entirely sure I’m up for a ‘meet the parents’ thing, you know?”

Danny sighed and let his head fall back against the pillow. “You’d rather that, for the sake of my sixty-something-year-old parents we keep the definition of ‘my partner’ to mean ‘that guy I work with who periodically tries to kill me with his stunt driving’?”

Steve really wished Danny were less sarcastic in general, because it made it damn hard to tell when he was being serious. “Danny, it’s not… I’m not ashamed –“

“Stop. Stop talking right now,” Danny told him.

Steve sighed, but shut up. He was pretty used to Danny telling him that and he’d found over time that it usually worked out better for him to comply, let Danny get through whatever it was he needed to get off his chest and _then_ explain himself.

“I’m facing my first Thanksgiving with my parents, my sister and her family, my brothers and whoever the hell they bring home, my Great Aunt Tilly and her poodle, all of whom are going to be asking me every six minutes how I’m coping _without_ Rachel and _with_ this lush green tropical hell I’ve been exiled to. You really think _I’m_ going to have a problem _not_ piling on to that with, ‘Oh and this is both my boss and my boyfriend?’”

Steve was glad he’d moved away as Danny’s hands flew around more and more as he explained his position on the subject. He idly wondered if his whole family was like that and if he’d be in danger of losing an eye if the football game got interesting or something. “Boyfriend?” Steve asked, trying to keep a straight face, but wanting to crack up.

Danny glared at him. “You want free turkey or not?” he asked with exasperation.

“Yeah,” Steve capitulated.

“Cool. Mom said Tilly’s staying the night since her son that lives with her is going over to his wife’s family for Thanksgiving. Which means she’ll be in the room my brother and I shared as kids. I think Jacob is bringing home his girlfriend of the week, so he’ll be in his room and she’ll be in Jenny’s. Which is fine. It gave me a reason to tell mom that I’d stay in a hotel, since I’m over sleeping on sofas right now. So, you know… we’ll have a place to retreat to when we need to.”

“When,” Steve repeated. “That’s encouraging. ‘When’, not ‘if’.”

“And Grace is staying at Jenny’s,” Danny continued, ignoring Steve, “She’s been carrying on for a week now about staying with her cousins. Like I was saying last night, she stayed there a lot when she was sick, so she got pretty close to them. She does that video chat thing with them on her laptop, but it’s not the same, so Jenny said Grace could stay with them.”

Steve grabbed Danny’s arm and pulled him over until Danny rolled against his side. “A hotel room all to ourselves? Can’t say I object to that. Even if the hotel has to be in New Jersey.”

Danny let the Jersey comment pass. “We’ll see if you still feel the same way after the eighth or ninth time Tilly asks you if you’re the guy they called to fix the hole in the ceiling. For the last few years she’s had a problem comprehending the idea of the sky-light my parents put in in the kitchen.”

Steve laughed and twisted until he could kiss Danny properly. “I think I’ll survive. When we get up, you’ll give me the flight info and I’ll book a ticket, okay?”

Danny looked up at him with the first truly happy look Steve had seen on his face in a few weeks. “Okay. Yeah, okay,” he said slowly, as if he were just allowing himself to believe that good things happening just might still be possible in his life. Even in Hawaii.


	3. Hele lua

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny said, "After you started punching elevator buttons with your SIG in front of a five-year-old, I was pretty nervous about letting her anywhere near you.”
> 
> “That was work!” Steve protested.

Even in Hawaii the bureaucracy of the TSA could reach out and grab you. Danny was grateful that they’d left more than two hours to get to their gate when he saw the lines backing up out of the x-ray and body-scanner control points. Even if it had meant leaving in the very, very pre-dawn hours.

Grace was be-bopping to whatever kiddy rock Rachel had approved for her iPod as they made their way slowly through the airport.

Danny watched as Steve, through force of habit and height, scanned the crowd for threats.

“Danno, are UFOs real?” Grace asked out of nowhere.

“Um…some people think they are. Why?”

“Jack from school said they are, but Kalia said they aren’t.”

“Well, a lot of people think that if there can be life on this planet, and that there are _so many_ other planets out there that there’s no reason there can’t be life on some of them,” Danny told her. He glanced up to see Steve watching the interaction raptly. “Other people think that since we’ve never seen one for sure, there’s no reason to believe that anyone is out there.”

Grace seemed to give that some thought. “What do you think?”

Danny shrugged. “I’ve never seen a blue whale or a great white shark, but I believe they’re out there.”

“You believe in UFOs?” Steve put in incredulously.

“I have no reason to not believe something could be out there.” Danny answered succinctly. This whole conversation was about to get very surreal, he was sure, now that Steve was in it.

“I’ve seen pictures of whales and sharks,” Grace answered.

Danny sighed, knowing he was now cornered into arguing the existence of UFOs. “Some people think they have pictures of UFOs.”

Under his breath, and while studiously staring at a ‘no printer toner cartridges on planes’ sign, Steve answered, “Some people have pictures of weather balloons and stealth planes flying too low. Or possibly, you know, a really big bird.”

“The truth is, Grace,” Danny finally said, “No one is sure. No one can prove that they are out there or that they aren’t. There’s a lot of planets out there and humans haven’t even visited one of them.”

“How come?”

“Because we haven’t been able to build a spaceship that can get an astronaut there and get him home again.”

“Do you think aliens can build a spaceship that can get them _here_ and home again?” Grace continued.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Steve couldn’t help but start laughing at that point. Grace was determined to get her dad to get her a definitive answer to a question that, as Danny had tried to explain to her, no one had absolute proof of one way or the other.

“You have a better answer for her?” Danny asked with a tense smile on his face.

“I just think it’s hysterical that it’s, like, five-thirty in the morning and a seven year old wants to have an existential conversation. Personally I’m not ready to think beyond where’s the nearest coffee shop to our gate.”

Danny laughed a little at that too. It was awfully early.

“I know that word!” Grace popped in. “It means aliens.”

“That’s extra-terrestrial,” Danny corrected.

“Okay, then what’s…” she stopped, trying to play Steve’s comments back in her head. “What’s what Steve said?” she finally settled for.

“Existential,” Danny told her. “And it means…” He stopped and scrubbed his face, trying to figure out how to explain such a vague concept to his daughter.

Steve was biting his lip again, waiting to see what Danny would come up with. He’d never considered himself a big fan of kids, but he had to admit he really liked watching Grace give her dad a run for his money.

“You want to take a crack at this one, Webster?” Danny said when he realized Steve was amused by the whole thing.

Steve gave it some thought. “Existential… it means…” he thought for another second, realizing that a four-hundred level college philosophy lesson was probably a little more that Grace was looking for. “It means thinking about really big ideas. Like if there’s a god or heaven. If people are generally good or bad. That kind of thing.”

“Or if there are aliens in the sky!” Grace added, pleased to have something to add to Steve’s definition.

Danny was giving him a dirty look for actually being able to explain himself in a way that Grace could understand. It wasn’t fair, Danny thought to himself. There had to be something Steve couldn’t do.

“What brought all this on?” Danny asked.

Grace pulled her iPod Touch out of her sweatshirt pocket, deftly flipping between the screens and tapping on various commands to make a video pop up. “Mom got this DVD for me and Stan put them on here.”

Danny took the iPod and saw a video he hadn’t seen since he was Grace’s age. “ _Interplanet Janet_. Wow. You know these were made when your mom and I were your age. But I don’t know if they showed them in England.” It made him wonder how Rachel had found about _Schoolhouse Rock_ when he hadn’t thought about those cartoons since he’d been ten.

“Hey do you have the one about the Revolutionary War on there? The one with ‘shot heard round the world’?” Steve asked as he looked over Danny’s shoulder.

Danny wasn’t sure if he should die of embarrassment or just howl in laughter as Steve and Grace both began singing, “There was a shot heard ‘round the world, it was the start of the revolution…”

“My world just gets weirder and weirder the longer I stay in this Dharma Initiative-controlled place.” Danny muttered as Grace took back the iPod and pulled up the requested video and she and Steve each put one earphone in and started singing along with it. “Of course, you know the one about guns. You couldn’t sing the one about, oh I don’t know, conjunctions or your brain or something?”

Steve just shrugged and went back to watching the video over Grace’s shoulder.

The line inched forward a bit at a time until they were finally able to grab bins for their shoes, carry-ons and sweatshirts. Steve went first while Danny checked Grace’s pockets and sent her through the metal detector ahead of him. As Steve was grabbing his rucksack off the conveyer he heard a beep and looked up just in time to see Danny roll his eyes. Grace was standing behind Steve, holding the bin with her shoes and iPod. She looked worried as Danny was escorted into the small glass room between the two lanes.

“It’s fine, Gracie. I just forgot to take something out of my pocket.” He gave Steve an imploring look. “Take her and get a drink or a bagel or something. I’ll catch up.”

Steve grabbed the rest of Grace’s things and his shoes and led her over to the bench. “Come on, Grace. Your dad’ll be a couple minutes.”

“What happened?” she asked, still watching as Danny sighed and followed the blue-shirted TSA agent over to the side for a pat down.

“Nothing big,” Steve told her. “Your dad was just so busy making sure you didn’t beep, that he forgot something in _his_ pocket, so he beeped, and now they have to make sure everything’s okay.”

Grace made a face.

“Seriously, it’s fine. It’s happened to me before too. He’ll catch up in a second. Besides”, he said loudly as Danny looked up, “now you have a chance to tell me all about what your dad says about me.”

Grace got the most wicked grin on her face as she finished tying her gym shoe and grabbed her backpack. Danny had a feeling the trip was about to go downhill rapidly for him.

 

There was coffee waiting for him when he finally caught up to his partner and daughter. Grace was laughing hysterically at whatever Steve had said, so Danny figured the trauma of being separated from her dad at the airport had been mitigated. He was a little afraid to find out how Steve had done that.

“What was it?” Steve asked as Danny fell into the chair next to Grace.

“My damn shield.”

“Your _badge_ got you tagged for a pat down. That’s… I don’t know… that’s pretty special, Danno.”

Grace giggled at Steve calling her dad by her pet nickname for him.

“You know, we were up at four in the freaking morning. I was running on autopilot. I grabbed my wallet, I grabbed my badge. I meant to toss it in my backpack, but then I got hung up on making sure Grace wasn’t going to set off any alarms…”

Steve pushed the coffee closer to Danny. “Need this?”

“You have no idea.” Danny said cradling the cup in both hands.

“Was it as bad as the news was making it out to be?” Steve asked when Grace seemed to be occupied with her iPod again.

“Let’s just say I’m never, ever going to forget to empty my pockets again.”

Steve smirked. “Come on, it can’t be so bad. Has to be the most action you’ve seen in at least…” his eyes rolled up as he thought, “at least forty-eight hours.”

Danny looked pointedly at Grace, “And if you want to see any action in the next forty-eight days, you’ll drop that conversation right now.”

They were interrupted by the sound of Grace clearing her throat. “Danno, you owe me a quarter.”

Danny made a face at her. “What did I say?”

“When Steve asked what you forgot to take out of your pocket, you said it was your –“

“Okay, okay… don’t you dare,” Danny cut her off, remembering all at once. She couldn’t remember when Steve used the word ‘existential’, but she caught Danny swearing with ears like a bat.

Steve was looking between them, confused.

“What’s the rules about grown ups using bad words?” Danny asked Grace.

“Stuff happens,” Grace answered automatically; clearly this had been drilled into her at one point.

“And what’s the rules about little girls swearing?” Danny asked.

“We darn well better not,” Grace answered on cue.

“When she was a kid she started repeating everything I said. At one point when she was about three she went to a play date and when a bug kept flying around her head she looks at this other kid’s mom and says, ‘Can you make this d-a-m-n fly go away?”

Steve almost choked on his coffee, imagining such a sweet little girl saying that in her very no-nonsense way. “Something tells me she didn’t spell it out.”

“Uh, no. Rachel about died right there. So Grace and I made a deal. If she caught me swearing she got a quarter, if I caught her swearing she got a time out on her bed with no t.v., no computer. Just books and dolls and stuff.” He shrugged, wondering if Steve would get it and then stood up and searched his pockets. “I don’t have any change,” he told Grace.

Steve pulled out the change from their drinks and handed Grace a dollar.

“A quarter, Bill Gates. I only owe her a quarter.”

Steve shrugged and nodded to Grace to pocket the money. “Now we’re covered if the plane is delayed or something, and your New Jersey mouth gets ahead of you.”

Danny sighed and wondered if Rachel ever had to have these discussions with Stan.

They still had more than an hour and a half before their scheduled departure, so they took their time finishing their drinks. When they were done, they headed for the gate, walking slowly so that Grace could stick her head in the toyshop, the jewelry shop and the Relay, where she used the dollar Steve gave her to get a pack of gum. Danny was glad she remembered how her ears still didn’t tolerate the pressure changes well, because he hadn’t. Which was remarkable considering the first time they’d taken her to the U.K. when she’d been about eighteen months old, she’d screamed the entire time and had been diagnosed by Rachel’s brother with an ear infection that probably hadn’t started bothering her until they were a few million feet in the air and there wasn’t anything that could be done for it.

When they got to the newsstand, she stopped and dropped Danny’s hand. “Can I get a magazine, Danno?”

Danny fished ten dollars out of his pocket and waved her into the small shop, leaning on the post in the doorway, watching her pick through magazines about Disney Princesses and animals and puzzle books. He knew Rachel would have put at least two books and a word find book in her backpack along with the various dolls and toys and gadgets Grace wouldn’t be able to live for a week without, but it had become a tradition, since Grace was old enough to at least flip through and look at the pictures on her own. She got a magazine or coloring book whenever they flew.

Danny was secretly pleased to notice that Steve was watching the store like Grace were the Queen of England and he was on her protection detail, letting her have her independence to pick out what she wanted and pay for it, but making sure no one bothered her either.

Grace came running back with a plastic wrapped magazine in her hand and before Danny could move, Steve stepped up and picked her up, setting her down a couple feet back from where she had been. “You’re gonna set off the alarm, kiddo,” he told her as he blocked her from moving forward again.

At first she looked a little rattled and Danny was considering giving Steve a piece of his mind, but then she started laughing so hard she turned red in the face. “That’s Danno’s job. He’s in charge of making things beep!”

There was something in her voice that made him think that Steve must have said something along those lines when he’d been delayed by the TSA. Danny pretended to be put out at her for teasing him. “Oh, I see. It’s going to be like that all day. Okay, fine.” He crossed his arms and turned his back and put on an exaggerated pout.

“All day?” Steve asked, deadpan. “I’m thinking for at least the rest of the trip.”

Grace on the other hand took pity on him and gave him a hug. “It’s okay, Daddy.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Steve and I are teasing.”

“Oh. Okay then.” Danny put her back down. “Is that the magazine you want?”

“It has a DVD. Can I watch the DVD on your computer?”

Danny took the magazine from her. Something from Disney with video clips and song files for her iPod. And an almost nine dollar price tag. “Yeah, fine. Go pay for it.”

As she walked the twelve feet to the counter, Danny looked at Steve. “Nine dollars for a magazine for a seven year old. I don’t pay nine dollars for a magazine for me.”

Steve put his finger and thumb on the opposite little finger and twisted. “Wrapped around it, Danno.”

Danny laughed, “Like I need to be told. But she’ll read the magazine too. I can’t gripe if she’s reading, right?”

Grace came back with her magazine a few seconds later. She handed Danny the change and then started ripping open the plastic wrap that kept the DVD inside the magazine. Danny snatched it away. “This is for the plane.” He tugged on the top of her bag. “Turn.”

Grace sighed to put-upon sigh of a child denied and turned and let her dad put the whole thing in her backpack.

They set off down the terminal again, when Steve stopped short at a juncture. “Go this way.”

“Our gate is down there,” Danny said pointing the way they were heading in the first place.

Steve pulled his wallet out and flipped to his Navy I.D. “This USO is this way.”

“You want punch and donuts?” Danny asked.

“It’s outfitted with a kids’ area – games and toys and stuff. We have more than an hour before they even start boarding. She can kill forty minutes or so.”

When Steve started walking again, Danny followed behind, Grace holding his hand again. “How do you know where there’s a rec room for kids?”

“I’ve been through the Honolulu airport a few million times when I was active military. I’ve spent a few hours in the USO room.” Steve shrugged.

“What’s a USO room?” Grace asked.

“USO is a group that has drinks and snacks for people in the military who are coming home or going out to their new base. And they have a little play area for military people who are traveling with their kids.”

Grace made a face. “I’m not your kid.” She didn’t seem offended by the idea, but Danny got the definite impression she had enough people trying to lay claim to her with Step-Stan being such a prominent part of her life now.

Steve went down to one knee in front of her, “Of course not. But if we can keep that our secret for a few minutes, you can play in there until the plane comes.”

Grace was clearly weighing her options. Lie, or get to play until she had to sit on a plane for ten hours. “Mm’kay,” she finally said before heading down the hall Steve had steered them to.

Danny and Steve looked at each other and shrugged before following her down the hall.

When they got there, Steve showed his I.D. and talked to the woman manning the coffee machine while Danny took Grace’s backpack and pointed her over to the kids’ corner. There was a little boy who looked to be about a year older than Grace who immediately launched himself at a potential playmate.

Danny fell into a chair, keeping one eye on her and one eye on the t.v. in the corner showing the local news.

Steve came over a few minutes later, handing Danny second cup of coffee. “She found a friend already?”

“Just what I need, a seven year old who attracts boys just by breathing.”

Steve elbowed him. “Just tell them that you carry a gun and that you have the governor’s dispensation to use it at will.”

They were quiet for a while before Danny looked around to make sure no one was paying any attention to them. “You’re good with her. I appreciate it.”

Steve shrugged.

“No seriously. After you started punching elevator buttons with your SIG in front of a five-year-old, I was pretty nervous about letting her anywhere near you.”

“That was work!” Steve protested.

“That’s not an excuse, really, it’s not,” Danny countered, but then continued before Steve could get a word in, “but at least you keep those shenanigans _at work_. There have been any number of ways I could have been getting on a plane with a very cranky small child today and you keep managing to save the day.”

Steve shrugged again. “She’s a cute kid. You did good with her.”

It was Danny’s turn to shrug. “She makes it pretty easy. And this is good, really. You’ll want at least one person on your side when my family gets ahold of you.”

“If I can handle you, I’m not too worried. Just think how things started for us when we met.”

“You were armed when we met. You’ll just _wish_ you were armed when Jenny and ma manage to corner you.”

They both laughed and settled in to keep an eye on Grace. It was going to be a long flight and possibly a long weekend, but at least they were doing it together.

**Author's Note:**

> Hoa: companion, partner  
> Hoʻomanaʻo ʻana: memory  
> Kakahiaka: morning  
> Hele lua: traveling together
> 
>  
> 
> [Side Street](http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/37/412053/restaurant/Hawaii/Ala-Moana/Side-Street-Inn-Honolulu), it turns out is a real place. Unlike Sandamar.  
> Grace was listening to "[Interplanet Janet](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDre36ZW14I)".  
> Grace and Steve were listening to "[Shot Heard 'Round the World](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhdmDDBjco0)".  
> Danny wanted them to listen to the ones about [Brains](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTwASnQ3S6Y&playnext=1&list=PLF101A8F82034EAA0&index=4) or [Conjunctions](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkO87mkgcNo)  
> Yes, the Honolulu airport really has a [kids' area in the USO](http://hawaii.gov/hnl/customer-service/uso/?searchterm=children).


End file.
